Some previously available storage systems provide fault tolerance through data mirroring. With data mirroring, multiple copies of an object are stored on a vault disk and again on different drives, so that a drive failure can only damage at most one copy of the data. The downside of data mirroring is that it is expensive due to being resource-intensive. For example, to be resilient to one failure, a storage system that utilizes data mirroring has to double the disk space available. Similarly, to be resilient to two failures, a storage system that utilizes data mirroring has to triple the disk space available. Another particular problem with data mirroring is that it results in a policy conflict for recording various media programs. Specifically, when recording a program on behalf of a customer, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides that one and only one unique instance of the data may be created for the customer. Therefore in this situation, data mirroring for the sake of providing fault tolerance violates copyright and associated fair use restrictions.
In accordance with common practice the various features illustrated in the drawings may not be drawn to scale. Accordingly, the dimensions of the various features may be arbitrarily expanded or reduced for clarity. In addition, some of the drawings may not depict all of the components of a given system, method or device. Finally, like reference numerals may be used to denote like features throughout the specification and figures.